Let's not beat around the bush, while exercise, daily physical activity, restful sleep and managing your stress are key, the way you distribute macronutrients, in other words, protein, carbohydrates and fats on your plate, is the key to shaping the way your body looks.
Today we're going to focus on how to find your personalized maintenance caloric intake. That is, your caloric expenditure per day and from there you can set your goal: whether it's to lose weight, gain muscle mass, lose fat, or gain weight, for example.
Why know your total daily energy expenditure or TDEE?
For starters, you require a minimum caloric expenditure or basal metabolic rate, which basically refers to the maintenance calories to live, what your body needs to have the strength to stand up, to breathe, your heart to beat, your cognitive function to perform properly and more. Total daily energy expenditure or TDEE is the sum of your minimum caloric expenditure plus the extra caloric expenditure your body generates from other activities, which varies with age, gender, level of physical activity, diet and other factors.
Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) corresponds to,
= The basal metabolic rate + the thermic effect of daily non-exercise physical activity (NEAT) + the thermic effect of exercise (TEA) + the thermic effect of food consumed (TEF).
Your basal metabolic rate, or BMR, is an estimate of how many calories your body burns each day with its normal functions, but it does not include daily physical activity or exercise as such.
While your BMR will remain relatively consistent from day to day, the total amount of calories you burn each day, or your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) is definitely going to vary depending on your lifestyle. The two main lifestyle factors that affect your TDEE are diet and exercise. These result in calories being burned through processes called the thermic effect of food (TEF) and the thermic effect of activity (TEA).
The TEA is relevant because it takes into account calories burned during exercise and is generally what people are referring to when they talk about “burning calories.” As you might expect, this can have a very significant impact on a person's TDEE, as endurance athletes can sometimes burn more than twice as many calories when they are training compared to the immobile time they spend during the day.
For its part, TEA refers to deliberate exercise (running, swimming, weightlifting, etc.) is separated from the calories you burn with movement throughout the day (standing, climbing stairs, etc.).
Now, what is known as NEAT or thermogenesis as a result of your daily activities that are not deliberate exercise, such as doing housework, grocery shopping, walking your pet, these are activities that would fall into this category. Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) has been shown to have significant effects on health, metabolism and potentially longevity.
NEAT has demonstrated metabolic benefits, for example, a study in rats showed that low to moderate intensity activities associated with NEAT produced increased lipoprotein lipase (LPL) activity compared to intense, but not sustained exercise. Higher LPL activity is associated with improved lipid metabolism and reduced cardiovascular risk.
These activities are often more sustainable over the long term than structured exercise programs, which may result in greater adherence and cumulative health benefits over time. (study)
Existing evidence strongly suggests that increased thermogenesis in non-exercise activities can contribute to a healthier lifestyle and, potentially, longer life expectancy. So, keep them in mind because doing housework or washing your car yourself may benefit you more than you think.
TEF, or also diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT), is used taking into account the fact that your body must expend energy to digest the food you eat, and that the amount of energy that must be expended to digest that food depends on the food itself. For example, on average, more energy is required to digest protein than for fats or carbohydrates, with 20 - 30% of calories consumed as protein being used to digest protein, compared to 5-15% for fats and carbohydrates.
In this sense, the percentages and distribution of macros make a difference in terms of your body's caloric expenditure according to the energy available to it.
The Difference Between Counting Calories and Tracking Macros
Both are valid techniques for tracking your daily caloric intake. Counting calories can help you lose or maintain your current body weight but not necessarily the exact ratio of macronutrients.
If you want to make changes to your body shape (such as losing fat), or if you are an athlete (increasing strength) or just a recreational athlete (increasing muscle mass), tracking macronutrients allows you to adjust your diet to your performance and body composition goals.
My interest is not to overwhelm you with formulas or internet applications to obtain the number of calories you should consume per day. However, these apps do provide you with some basic criteria to help you determine how much of each macronutrient should be on your plate of food if you want to maintain the weight you have, if you want to lose fat, if you want to gain muscle, or if you need to gain weight.
This information I am about to share with you will at least give you the freedom to organize how you want to eat and most importantly, see results.
You no longer have to fall into fad diets where you are told to eliminate one food or another. When you know how much of each macronutrient you should eat, according to your established goals, the feeling of sacrifice or feeling left out because other people are eating everything while you are not, is over. That's why tracking how much of each macronutrient is in each of your meals is the key to achieving the goals you set for your body shape, energy and daily performance.
Macronutrient tracking apps are very accessible. Perhaps you are already familiar with some of them like Cronometer or Prospre. Any of these Apps, once you enter your information and goals, they can help you calculate your macronutrients.
There are several formulas to do the calculation. The three most common formulas are Harris-Benedict, Mifflin-St. Jeor and Katch-McArdle. For each of the formulas below,
BMR is the basal metabolic rate in calories (kcal),
m is body mass in kg or in pounds if you prefer,
h is height in cm or in feet,
a is age in years,
BF% is body fat percentage.
Physical Activity Factor (FAF)
Because TEF (food) has less impact than TEA (deliberate activity and exercise), and because TEF is much more complex to estimate accurately, formulas for calculating TDEE usually combine these values into a single number called the physical activity factor. This physical activity factor is determined by estimating a person's physical activity level and choosing the corresponding value from a table of known values. The FAF (physical activity factor) is multiplied by the BMR to determine the TDEE. This factor ranges from 1.1 to 2.0 for the vast majority of people.
This is the method used in the calculator on these platforms and can provide an approximation of TDEE that is sufficient in principle, especially if you are learning to operate these applications.
Caloric Surplus or Deficit Would be the KEY
Words more, words less, to lose weight, your caloric intake must be less than your TDEE. Conversely, if you want to gain weight, you must eat more calories than your TDEE. The difference between the calories you eat and your TDEE will determine the rate at which your weight changes.
Your Goal will be the Guide for Varying your Caloric Intake with Respect to your TDEE
If your goal is to lose weight, try to make the weight loss sustainable, that is, not rapid weight loss because that is just an indicator that you are putting your body under too much stress, so let the process be gradual. This allows you to control that the weight lost is fat and not muscle. It is also important to make sure that there are no nutrient imbalances. Half a kilo (500 gr) of weight loss per week is usually an acceptable goal and within healthy parameters.
How Much Would Then be the Ideal Caloric Increase to Gain Weight?
If you wish to gain mainly muscle and not fat, this should also be done gradually. For moderate weight gain, half a kilo (500 gr) per week would be a reasonable target.
How to Translate your Weight Goals into Calories?
This depends on a number of factors, such as your activity level, type of work, what foods are prime on your plate, etc. However, a common approach is to convert the muscle or body fat you want to reduce or increase into calories, and then target that amount for a caloric surplus or deficit.
To make the procedure easier for you, if the case is to lose weight and/or body fat this would correspond to approximately 500 calories off your TDEE, to do it gradually, without falling into a deficit of any important nutrient and, above all, for you to monitor your progress. This way you can adjust your calories yourself as needed, depending on how fast or slow you lose or gain weight.
For the opposite case, meaning, to gain muscle mass, you will still need to gain some weight and, consequently, fat. However, this also depends largely on your physical activity and the percentages of each nutrient in your daily caloric intake. Here again, it is important to increase your daily caloric intake by 500 calories and see how your body reacts.
So, What Would be the Appropriate Ratio of macronutrients?
Once you have established your calorie goal (that's what these apps are good for), the next step is to decide how to distribute the macronutrients on your plate to reach those calories.
Let's start by understanding that protein contains 4 calories per gram. Carbohydrates likewise contain 4 calories per gram. While fats provide 9 calories per gram when consumed. So, at the end of the day, this is the math on your daily caloric intake and whose proportions will be reflected first on your plate and then in your body shapes.
Note: Although alcohol is not a macronutrient, you should know that it contributes 7 calories per gram so that you can take it into account in your calorie count.
Examples of calories in some typical alcoholic beverages:
- 1 shot of alcohol (vodka or gin) with diet lemonade = 80 calories.
- 1 glass of wine, 5 oz (about 150 ml approximately) = 120 calories
- Beer, 12 oz (about 355 ml approx.) - 180-200 calories
Now you know that all of your foods are classified into these three macronutrient groups:
Basically, protein includes animal protein, as well as free amino acids (isolated in tablets), dairy, and vegetable proteins (which are not complete proteins as they are usually deficient in one or more amino acids and often must be supplemented with another food to make it a complete protein).
Carbohydrates refer mainly to all vegetables, vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts and seeds, as well as products prepared from them.
Healthy fats include olive oil, dairy such as certain aged Parmesan or Pecorino cheeses. Eggs, salmon, tuna and other sources of omega-3 fats found in fish and certain nuts, especially.
In the next article I will explain, through updated studies, how much and what kinds of protein are best absorbed and make your body work more efficiently.